By Community Correspondent Bob Ferris Burning rubbish is a difficult concept to grasp and would of course be a hard sell to anyone who lives near a proposed site. However, our Continental cousins do it quite successfully without anyone getting hot under the collar.

Firstly, an internet search for the Vienna Incinerator will amaze anyone who sees it, partly because it looks like a work of art and all the more so because it is virtually in the centre of one of the most glamorous cities in Europe.

In the city of Odense in Denmark they burn ALL of the city's rubbish to produce electricity, saving 10% of the coal they used to use - this year they are also burning all of the stubble from the wheat fields, saving a further 10% of the coal.

All of the smoke is cleaned, with all acids, heavy metals and other emissions removed. What comes out of the chimney is steam - everything else is taken out. Just as a little extra, the hot water produced by cooling the turbines that produce the electricity is piped to 100,000 houses in the city. No one has a boiler - they just BUY cheap hot water.

If we could only convince the public at large that incineration is beneficial instead of harmful, surely there could be an incinerator and power station at every waste transfer station in the country.